The Question at Hand
by Leven Kemal
Summary: Set early pre-series. It's Unification Day. A captain, his first mate, and his new pilot walk into a bar... Wash & Mal, with a little Zoe. --Second of six stories in a Mal-Wash story arc, "A Question of Gravity" being the first.--


Title: The Question at Hand  
Warnings: A little fisticuffs.

Disclaimer: You know and I know these people belong to Joss.

A.N.: Written for LJ's 2by2fics. Prompts: _Gluttony_ & _Villain_.

* * *

_'Is a man ever the villain of his own story?'_ Wash mused as he hastily scooted his chair back from his table, narrowly avoiding the flying heels of the guy Mal had just sent somersaulting over it. '_'Cause if this _**_bar _**_has a story, Mal would certainly be the villain in _**_it_**_. Or at least in this evening's chapter.'_

Standing, he decided, might be a good plan, maybe get his back to a wall, out of the roiling cauldron of humanity currently working itself up into a proper boil. The major catalytic heat source being supplied by his very own Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

Wash had known it was U-Day, but only in a hazy sort of way, when the captain had invited him to join him and Zoe at the local (and only) bar. He supposed he could be forgiven that, as it was only the third time that holiday had been celebrated. The first, of course, being the actual day of the Independents' official surrender. At that point, however, the scheduled date – not just the day, but the hour and minute – of his approaching freedom burned far more fiercely in his brain. For the second, he'd been out in the Oort Cloud ice trawling, his days blurring seamlessly one into the next, Unification Day passing unnoticed. So the date hadn't factored into the reason they might be going to the bar in the first place. Wash just figured Mal wanted to get to know his recently acquired pilot a little better, in an off-duty venue. He did notice Bester hadn't been invited. Which he didn't mind in the least, as the guy was, honestly, a bore. Odd in a mechanic, but the only kind of hydraulics he seemed interested in were of the personal sort, those located in his pants. Or more frequently _outside_ his pants, if a fraction of his stories were to be believed. Wash, actually, was a great fan of both sorts, but considered the personal kind, well, personal, and not a topic for dinnertime conversation.

Wash had been taken aback by the density of the crowd when they walked in. The moon's population was tiny, yeah. But it seemed its entire adult, mostly male, contingent, had jammed itself into the place. Should have clued him in then that they'd just walked into some sort of on-going Event.

They'd squeezed themselves up to the bar, and the captain had bought a round; Ngkapei for himself, a whiskey for Zoe, and a draft beer for Wash. Wash had figured they'd end up standing, jostling back and forth in the throng, any chatting they'd get done only over the tumult of voices and the jangling from the upright piano in the corner. But Zoe had looked at some guys sitting at a table and they'd all suddenly gotten up and moved quickly off. She and Mal sat down, and after a moment of surprise at the others' abrupt departure, Wash had joined them.

The beer, crisp and hoppy, was quite good, as it often was in these places that brewed their own. Either that, or absolutely wretched. Unlike getting a corporate-brewed beer, which was always what it was (unless it got skunked during transport), dependably drinkable in its unexceptionality. He listened to Mal and Zoe discuss their current business dealings, supposing he'd eventually learn the names and personalities of their contacts if he stuck with _Serenity_ long enough. Or didn't get himself fired for some egregious offense, such as crashing his just barely flyable ship. Or drooling on the first mate. His companions' conversation came off a bit desultory, though. Like they were just going through the motions. Mal's eyes constantly roamed the crowd, and he seemed to be waiting for something. Zoe, too, took frequent scans of the people around them, but she seemed more intent on watching her captain's expression and demeanor.

Leaning back in his chair, one hand coming up to twiddle absently with his mustache, Wash wondered if maybe he'd been wrong in his assessment of their relationship. Although he couldn't fathom it, he hadn't detected any trace of attraction toward his first mate on the captain's part. Wash had wondered if maybe the guy were sly, so he'd watched him a few times when moving through marketplaces. And while the man seemed, in general, hyper-alert in crowds, taking a good look at everyone and everything around him, his eyes would sometimes catch and linger on some particular individual. And that individual would invariably be of the womanly persuasion, passing them by in an elegant swirl of filmy fabric. So, while he _could_ just be admiring the silky gowns, probably not sly.

And besides, it wasn't Mal watching Zoe. It was Zoe watching Mal. And while her watching didn't _seem_ the type of watching of a person in love, he just couldn't tell, with her. And that unreadable self-containment had him hooked tighter than a magnetic grapple.

A halloo from a raucous group by the bar drew his as well as Mal's and Zoe's attention. He heard "Alliance" and "victorious" lift up over the general hub-bub, then a unison "Hooray!" Raucous calls containing "Browncoats" and "scum" then erupted from this same cluster.

"Need a refill," the captain stated tersely, rising, although he didn't actually, his Ngkapei but half gone. Glass in hand, he began threading his way politely toward the bar. Zoe tossed back her whiskey, following the captain's progress with her eyes until he vanished into the press. Something was brewing, Wash could tell, but what, he had no idea. Backtracking trajectories and timing in his head, he figured Mal had arrived at the bar and had had about thirty seconds to interact with those bellied up to it before the jostling and yelling increased exponentially. Wash's spacial sense put his captain at the center of this tightening clump of turmoil.

He turned to look at Zoe, gesturing with an open hand toward the noise, and said, "Um."

She, however, took no note of him and his concern. She simply sighed, setting down her empty glass and levering herself out of her chair. She followed the path Mal had taken, but as the kinetic energy of the crowd had increased considerably, her elbows saw some strategic work. Wash calculated she'd just about reached the captain when some sort of concussive event occurred in the center of the knot. The force of it had folks staggering back, the wave effect parting the crowd before him. The memory of curtains spreading at the opening of a shadow puppet show echoed freakishly in his brain.

"Whoa," Wash murmured, gripping his mug of beer tighter, wondering if hops had been the only herb added during its brewing. And there, center stage, stood – well, no, they certainly weren't simply _standing_ – dodged, lunged, spun Wash's captain and first mate. His jaw dropped. The brutal efficiency of their individual fists, feet, knees, elbows impacting flesh shocked him. Together, though, as a team, watching each others' backs, one setting up a foe for the other to finish off was... fascinating. A dance, almost, if dances included squalls of pain and spurting nose bleeds.

And then the whole mass was rumbling toward him, as musings on stories and villains occurred and a man tumbled over his table, and Wash was now out of his chair – good thing, too, as seconds later a beefy guy, flipped over Mal's hip, landed in its seat, crushing it beneath him, and that woulda hurt if it had been Wash's lap – edging wall-ward. (Was the captain deliberately flinging these people in his direction?)

Tangles of fighting started up all around the room, some maybe old animosities from the war freshly awoken. But, Wash thought, given the sudden and spontaneous chaos erupting throughout the packed bar, most were rooted in personal grudges, or just the sheer pleasure of hell-raising.

He found a vantage point, right next to the piano, whose player, a dark-skinned, curly-headed boy of about twelve, hammered out a high-spirited accompaniment to the proceedings. The lad grinned at him, a flash of impish good humor, clearly entertained. Wash returned the grin, although he wasn't all that amused himself.

He watched his captain and first mate fight, sipping his beer, standing close to but not leaning on the wall, carefully balanced, just in case Mal _was_, in fact, deliberately throwing an occasional person at him. Running his tongue tip contemplatively along his upper lip, catching the traces of foam off his mustache, he compared their styles.

Zoe embodied efficiency; quick, silent, ruthless. The realization that she must have been the same in actual combat, with actual _killing_-type fighting, sent a little shock through him. That it was less a horror-shock and more a libidinous-shock startled him. He carefully tucked his realization and his reaction to it away, to unwrap and pore over privately.

She rabbit punched a guy in the kidney just as he was about to bring a bottle down on the back of Mal's skull. The captain spun at the man's wheezing cry of pain, elbow coming up to smash into his face, dropping him to his knees. Zoe and Mal's gaze met, his grin wild and wicked, and Wash caught the roll of her eyes as she pivoted away from her captain to deal with an attack on her flank.

The captain dragged the guy, still clutching his bottle, back onto his feet, bringing them face to face, making sure he was looking straight at him. And that, Wash thought, was the major difference between Zoe and Mal. She was like a surgeon's scalpel, impersonal, getting the job done swiftly and cleanly. Mal... _looked_ for connection. He sought it out. He stared into his opponent's face, grinning, taunting, making it personal.

Wash winced as his captain slugged the man, driving him back down to the floor, this time all the way to his belly. Another guy, maybe a buddy of the one Mal had just squashed, charged him, spouting angry abuse. Still grinning, Mal took him on, accepting the fists pummeling his own body in order to get in a brutal series of blows himself.

Wash shook his head, shifting his feet, uncomfortable with the amount of joy the captain seemed to be deriving from this brawl. He just couldn't see the _fun_ in hurting someone, in smashing them in the face and belly. Not that he was reading Mal as some sort of sadist. 'Cause the hurting wasn't flowing just _from_him_._ Oh no, it seemed part of the point that his own skin – and bones and flesh and guts – was at risk of taking damage. It seemed a kind of gluttony, in fact, a perverse hunger to dish out and get back great heaping servings of chaos and pain. And, he had to admit, as Mal hoisted the guy onto the bar, then slid him along its length, glasses and bottles flying, a sort of brutal physical humor. It spoke to Wash of a deep, bitter well of anger and resentment. Of a fury directed not only at those he fought, but at himself as well. A punishment of himself and of as much of the 'verse he could lay his hands on. But twisted back around on itself so that the giving and receiving of the punishment evoked a sense of exultation.

So, _was_ the captain the bad guy of his own story? Or the dark kind of good guy who couldn't just wait around for trouble to come knocking, so he whipped up some of his own? Wash realized he could be reading the man completely wrong, could be simply spinning notions out of nothing. It was possible Mal just liked to brawl for the heck of it, nothing weighty or psychological about it. And, on a practical level, did it matter? A captain who relished violence, whether a simple brawler or a heroic villain or villainous hero, did not suggest a person making safe or reasonable decisions, long-term. Could be he needed to think on this, balance it against some of the compelling reasons he had to stick with _Serenity_.

Propelled off the end of the bar, the captain's most recent opponent landed on the table of a heretofore peaceable group of patrons. The spillage of their drinks ended that, and those five or six individuals mobbed Mal, and Wash thought maybe that was it, as they all tumbled into a heap on the floor, Mal on the bottom layer. But then Zoe was there, reaching into the pile, and bodies were flying, and she had the captain by the collar of his coat, hauling him to his feet again. It was all rather breath-taking, really, and Wash thought he wouldn't mind having her haul him around by _his_ collar.

The hand that _did_ reach out of the crowd to grasp his collar, jerking him away from the wall, was not at all shaped in deadly elegance. It rather resembled the fellow on the other end of the arm; huge, meaty, hairy, and disturbingly grimy. Wash quickly grabbed the wrist, anxious to avoid damage to his second favorite aloha shirt, the yellow and purple one, while staring with wide-eyed dismay at his accoster. Who dragged him closer, giving Wash a real good look at his lumpy visage, freshly battered on top of long-term wear, along with a real good whiff of his breath. Wash held his, blinking rapidly against the stinging of his eyes.

The guy peered at him, squinting hard in an attempt to focus. Then he sneered, "Yer with that sumbitch Browncoat. Saw ya drinkin' together."

Wash contemplated denying it, to insist that, given the crowd, he'd just sat in any old chair, plus there'd been a beautiful woman already at the table and so who wouldn't sit there? Because this wasn't his fight. At least not this whole U-Day thing and the bloody mess that it commemorated. And which, with a whoop of laughter followed by a stunning smash of mirrored glass, his captain seemed bent on recreating.

But.

But, it was his _crews'_ fight.

Sighing, Wash reached back and regretfully set his mostly full beer mug down on the top of the piano. "Yeah, I'm with him," he admitted.

With a ferocious gap-toothed grin, the guy drew back his fist, tightening his grip on Wash's collar. Squinching his eyes closed, Wash tucked his chin down and launched himself into his opponent. The top of his head met the other guy's face with a ghastly crunching sound. The force of his lunge sent them both toppling to the floor, Wash on top, howls of shock and pain blaring in his ear.

~*~

"Don't know what ya was thinkin', Wash, tryin' to grapple with a fella nearly twenty kilos heavier 'n you."

The nighttime breeze, carrying the floral scent of hops from the surrounding fields, wafted over Wash, a balm to his over-heated skin. The moon's primary, filling about a third of its sky, spilled its planet-light over them, turning its satellite's midnight deep violet.

"I wasn't given much choice in grappling partners, Captain. Believe you me, had it been consensual grappling, my partner would have been much lighter, more recently bathed, and probably lots more feminine."

Really, he was okay. He wasn't quite sure why his captain and his first mate had made a point of bracketing him as they made their way down the dusty road back to where he'd parked _Serenity_. Mal in particular was far more wobbly on his pins than he was.

"Well, y' were doin' all right there, though it was a sight quite comical to behold, him hollerin' and bleedin' and floppin' the both of ya about on the floor. Gorram, you had a hold on him tighter'n a louse on a private."

"Glad to be part of the entertainment," Wash replied dryly.

"That you were," Mal affirmed, his grin warming his voice. "Don't ya think, Zoe?"

"Did provide some color to the proceedings, sir."

Mal guffawed. "Color. That he did. Look, Wash, you get that shirt of yours soakin' in some cold water soon's we get back. Blood'll come right out. 'S any of it yours?"

Wash shook his head. "Nah, I'm good." And he was, mostly. A few bruises here and there, but no significant structural damage. The clamping down and hanging on thing usually worked out pretty well if he couldn't avoid personal combat. Even big guys had a hard time breaking out of his grip if he applied himself. And as he usually had no real interest in doing damage by punching, he'd just hang on until the other guy wore himself out, or one of his crew came and rescued him. As Zoe'd done back there. He'd probably have bruises where her fingers had closed on his right biceps. Bruises he'd cherish.

"Why didn't you just hit the man, pilot?" that amazing person asked him, and he figured the alcohol and the dust-up must of loosened her up a bit, to express that much curiosity in him.

"The hands," he declared, lifting his and waggling his fingers at the red- and purple-streaked gas giant looming in the sky above them. "My hands are my livelihood. My hands on a helm are supposed to be keeping a ship all safe and sound. Can't be mashing phalanges and crushing joints in some light-hearted horse-play."

His captain's hand, callused, hard, but warm, very warm, fell on his shoulder, giving it a friendly squeeze. "Good point, Wash. Best to be keepin' y' out of any ruckuses in the future, I'm thinkin'. They ain't the point of you, anyways. You keepin' us flyin' fast and free, yep. That's the point of you."

Mal's hand stayed on Wash's shoulder, resting there as they ambled along. Weird, but its warmth seemed to spread to the center of his chest, and he felt somehow lighter, like maybe his own personal gravity had drifted toward point seven or six. Ahead, he spotted _Serenity's_ bulk, the silhouette of her lifting prow black against the purple sky. He felt his smile stretch into a grin, and he couldn't help it, a joyous burst of laughter burbled up out of him. It felt good, he realized. It felt good to be recognized, 'cause, yep, keeping his ship flying fast and free. That was the point of him.

~*~


End file.
